Bright Neighbor: Connecting and tightening neighborhood bonds

Let's say you have a frayed overstuffed chair that you want to learn how to reupholster (I do.) Let's say you have very few house-holding skills although you recently learned the hard way how to strip 98 years worth of wallpaper and paint from lathe and plaster walls (I just did.)

How do you find someone in the neighborhood to swap a re-upholstery lesson for wallpaper stripping? Enter the homegrown online social networking tool Bright Neighbor designed with Portland in mind.

One goal is to connect people and tighten neighborhood bonds, said founder Randy White. Another is to help us live greener, more sustainable lives by sharing our stuff - from tools and vegetables - to car rides around town.

"If money went away tomorrow, this is a construct of helping us keep it together," said White, who launched the site in November and made Portland the test ground for Bright Neighbor.

"We have enough stuff and enough people. We just need leadership and action."

Whatever happened to just hanging out on your porch and meeting neighbors?

That's great when it happens, said White, but it doesn't always these days. "The secret is: I'm hoping we don't need Bright Neighbor," he said. Someday.

Maybe after he has convinced cities around the country to buy the platform, which he is calling a "greening behavior tool."

White recently threw a sustainability party in the Southwest with free beer and pizza and, of course, a lot of people showed up. But online membership is now at 4,000 and growing. This week the city of Portland linked to it on its Portland is Better Together page.

"It's a social networking tool that's uniquely attentive to Portlanders identifying with their neighborhoods ... and getting people to connect wtih one another," said Brian Hoop, neighborhood resource center manager for the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.

White, 32, has long been interested in sustainability issues and writes the blog Lawns to Gardens. He is also in the Portland band Railer.